Language Teacher Toolkit: Steve Smith's blog

This information was sent to me. It may be of interest. “The free Linguacuisine web app helps you learn a language while you’re cooking a meal! Choose a foreign language and a delicious recipe from that country. Then your own smartphone or tablet will speak to you in the foreign language and talk you through all of the stages of cooking the recipe in your own kitchen. If you can’t understand, just press a button to get a photo or video explaining what to do. When you’ve finished, eat the food you’ve cooked and learn something about the culture of the country. Linguacuisine has a range of recipes now available for language learning from around the world at https://linguacuisine.com/app/ We now have recipes available in: English, Greek, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Quechua, Chinese and Korean. You can also use the free recipe builder app so that you can upload your own favourite recipe in your own language. That means that anyone anywhere in the world will be able to watch videos a...

Here is an exercise you could give Y10-11 pupils (intermediate) if they have been working on the theme of food and drink. Incidentally the research suggests that using vocabulary in context like this is likely to make it more memorable. In addition this type of exercise requires some processing of grammar too, so you can argue it’s more productive than just learning from a list. Put another way, making the brain work a bit harder can lead to deeper knowledge of words and better retention in long-term memory. First letters are given to help, but you can add more support for weaker classes. You could make up similar sentences for other areas of vocabulary. 1.​ Au petit déjeuner je prends des c___________ avec du lait. 2.​ J’adore le b________ bourguignon ; c’est mon plat préféré. 3.​ J’aime tous les fruits, mais celui que je préfère, c’est le p_______________ 4.​ Je suis comme un lapin, j’adore les c_____________. 5.​ Il faut tout consommer avec modération. Il faut avoir un régime é...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2e9Hl4roy0 Finding video listening material for beginner to intermediate pupils is a challenge. I look at many clips and reject nearly all of them since I believe that there's little point playing material with too much unknown language or clips which are too long. (The research suggests at least 90% of listening and reading material should already be known for and acquisition to take place, although adapting the task to the text helps mitigate the level of difficulty.) Cartoons aimed at very young French children open up possibilities, though even these need careful sifting. They are authentic and fun. So, as you may know already, I have published a lot of comprehension worksheets linked to short cartoon clips, especially Peppa Pig. They are well liked by teachers and pupils. This one is a Trotro video which you could use from Y8 to Y10 (low intermediate). I cannot stress too much how naughty Trotro is. In this video he is no PicASSo. U...

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/languages-boost-to-deliver-skilled-workforce-for-uks-businesses The DfE in England announced today an investment of nearly £5 million in a national centre for languages, including the involvement of nine schools which will act as hubs spreading good practice and, it’s said, drive up standards. The good practice which the centre aims to spread is based on the Teaching Schools Council Review of MFL Pedagogy, which I have previously blogged about on a couple of occasions. You can find it here. It’s worth a careful read: https://www.tscouncil.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/MFL-Pedagogy-Review-Report-2.pdf On the one hand any new investment in languages (in this case French, German and Spanish) is to be welcomed. This particular initiative, officially supported by the CBI, is a response to the faltering take-up of modern languages in secondary schools and skill shortages in the world of work. One DfE spin on this is that in the post-Brexit era we shall ...